The Adventures of a PB&J

Dear Family,

I am going to start off with the story of Elder Searle who was hungry. It started on a humid day in Milford Nebraska, we worked all day and just got home for the night and had just finished planning for the next day when Elder Searle's stomach was making noises. So I decided to make a PB&J! So I start making the sandwich and realize that I put the piece of bread in a mile of ants....so I throw it away of course, cleaned up the ants again for like the 15th time (we just can't get rid of them) so I start making another sandwich, I got to the same spot as the last sandwich when I realized I had little black spots in my peanut butter, so I look and I got ants on the lid, since I moved the lid to clean up the ants, I put the lid back on so now there are ants in the peanut butter....I gave up, threw it all away and made some gross oatmeal. Who knew it would be so hard to make a late night snack...so that's how my week started!

We had zone conference in Grand Island and this was the last time that we would see President and Sister Weston...so it was a kind of sad conference, President Weston gave us his departing interview questions to think about and they talked about President and Sister Gardner who will be taking over. So that took most of the day.

Wednesday was sooooo hot and humid!! It was just gross. The first thing we did in the day was to go help an older lady who we check up on,  and she wanted us to pull weeds for her. While doing this, Elder Hansen and I looked like we were shining with all the sweat. Then, she normally gives us coupons and some money to go buy lunch but today she decided to make us a good "grandma meal" so she made us chili....Good Gosh that thing sat like a rock...nothing like a good ol' hot bowl of chili after a hard day of working. :)

Thursday we had 3 1/2 inches of rain and are most likely getting the same amount from last night and today. We have had so much rain! The storm Thursday blew over a center pivot that is by Milford, across from the Poo Farm and those things are pretty heavy and I have no clue how the wind caught it, but it flipped it over and broke it.

Saturday we played Uno Attack with a family, they invited us over for dinner. The dad was on the phone most of the time with his son who lives in Washington, so we played the game with the wife and 2 kids. One just graduated and the other one is a sophomore I think. She is the one that threw the cat at Elder Hansen a couple three months ago. It was fun time and I won the game 3 times!!

Sunday we were able to go over with Brother Thompson and talk to his neighbor. Bro Thompson called us and said that he set up a time with his neighbor for us to come over! :D First time that has happened to us where a member set up an appointment. We talked about the Plan of Salvation because he was just diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. It's in his lungs and the back of his throat. He is only 37, never smoked never did drugs. He is a really good man and just starting to want to figure out what all happens after this life and stuff about his family. So we were able to do that for him.

Also, the funny, silly pics that we took....that's what we are going to give our branch mission leader for his birthday!! We are going to frame one of them and give it to him today. We wanted to make sure that he would never forget us and tried to get the pictures as random and funny as we could get. :)

Love you all!!

Elder Searle

 Last time seeing President and Sister Weston

 Elder Searle & Elder Jenkins

 Elder Searle & Elder McMurray

 Probably what he was thinking with his ant sandwich :)

 Elder Searle & Elder Hansen are quite the characters!! Lol!!

Poo Farm

Dear Family,

I feel like the title of this email is correct. They are cleaning up or doing something with the cattle farm that they have by Milford and it smells soooo bad!! You can taste the nasty poop farm. I can't remember if I told you guys, but we found out they try to keep 10k head of cattle and that once it starts to warm up, they will be cutting down to 2 poops a day...So lets just say they do that now, that's 20k poops a day!! Then it rains and it makes it all muddy, then the sun dries it out and the wind blows it into Milford!! Yah!!!

We got a call on Tuesday from the people who run Foodnet and they wanted to know if we would be able to come over sometime and of course we said yes and she said "how about tonight?" Well sure!! She asked if we had dinner and we hadn't so we got to eat with them and enjoy their company. We found out that both of them have met with missionaries in the past. We have just been having small talk I guess you could say. We found out why the Mennonite women have their little things and stuff, turns out that they are in a round about way looking for a religion. They don't believe in a lot of their religion and really just go because it's close by and it's the church that she grew up going to. 

On Wednesday night, we both pretty much looked wasted! The lack of sleep caught up to us and we started to wear out while we were at the Hensley's for part of the night. We had dinner with them and also read the Book of Mormon with them. Then we helped them move a washer and dryer from the basement to the upstairs and that was fun since Elder Hansen and I were both so out of it. 

Thursday we helped out at the Crossmakers and we helped them unload 2 trailers full of lumber. We went to the Huges Brothers Plant which is huge here and unloaded it by hand onto a giant forklift thing. It was kinda cool to see some of the plant. We then had Matt come out with us for the afternoon, he's 20 and just working to save up money for his mission, so he comes with us on his days off and helps us out. He is even hooking us up at Amigos where he works for cheaper food and free donuts after 8pm!! :)

We found out our less active is going back to jail, I guess she decided to go there rather than pay the fine. We were walking around Milford and were told there was a band/fundraising going on at the park, so we walked over there and there was a group called Tiny Hands and they help out with the stuff that is going on in Nepal. So we walked over cause we saw they had some food and everyone was staring at us.It's great!! So we donated some money and then could get some cookies and root beer floats while everyone is still staring at us. We had a guy come up and talk to us, he likes to debate with missionaries so we'll go see him one of these days. Then we had the main Tiny Hand guy come and talk with us for quite a while about how Christ has helped him in his life and stuff...it was pretty cool!!

Saturday we decided we were tired of just walking Milford and Seward so we went up to Beaver Crossing and Utica and walked those areas for a bit. Beaver Crossing was hit by a tornado last year on Mother's Day and you can sure tell. I should have taken a picture, it's just destroyed and kinda creepy. All the trees are stripped down and stuff. We walked around and were suppose to see a family, but they cancelled on us.

Wow, long email here but I have one more day!! So Sunday, we get a ride to and from church from a family and the dad has to stay and do the tithing, so we were chillin' at the church for a bit and turns out the young women had their New Beginnings going on!! So we stayed and watched it, and it was pretty cool. I'm glad we were there because K was there, but her family didn't come (not surprised) so it was good for her that we were there for her. That night we went to Hensley's and watched some Mormon Messages and ate ice cream. Good way to finish off the week I'd say. 

So there's my week, tomorrow we have Zone Conference in Grand Island so we will be there pretty much all day. Weeks here are going by faster and faster....that it's just scary!! It's flying by!!

Love you all!!

Elder Searle

Another Transfer in Seward

Dear Family,

Since I emailed last week on Tuesday, this might be a shorter email. On Wednesday we were able to go to the Hensly's again and we had a campfire with them! We were able to eat and play basketball with the kids and I was also the catcher for Taylor because she wanted to practice her softball pitch. It was really fun, I smelled like a campfire, we read a little bit from the Book of Mormon with them around the campfire so that was cool.

Something kinda funny on Tuesday was, we were having dinner with a family and they were making Elder Hansen very trucky. Their daughter is like 10 and she was telling Elder Hansen that his girlfriend dumped him and that he is now single, then she said that she's not sure what his kids will look like cause she hasn't seen a picture of his girlfriend. He isn't trucky but that wasn't going to help! :)

Saturday we went to a BBQ down in Crete with the Spanish Elders, they have a recent convert and they wanted to feed all of us so we went down there. We got eaten alive by all the mosquito's...it's sooo bad here!! Last I heard, we are either 2nd or 3rd on the list of the most rainfall in Nebraska for May, that means mosquito's everywhere!! We now speed walk everywhere we go so we don't get bit! It's great!

Sunday was also a fun day, we had a good time at church. We then went to the elderly care center to see one the ladies that we don't get to see too much. We were going into the conference room when one of the other ladies wanted to join us, then they were like, "you should go get Grandma Howard!" We thought, sure why not, let's get everyone in here! We went around the circle saying how our day went and something good that happened...it was pretty fun. We also found out this day that Elder L. Tom Perry passed away.

We're hoping to be able to go to Utica and Gresham and go see 2 families. We weren't able to see them last week because we didn't have any miles left. But...since it was a new transfer, we got our new miles!! There is a daughter that comes to church just about every week, she comes from a part member family and wants to be baptized. I guess her dad wouldn't let her get baptized before, she asked him again and he didn't say no this time. Turns out a while ago, he was drunk and destroyed a phone pole on his way home one day. That was his final thing for him, he decided to quit and he's been sober now for 4 months. We saw them 2 weeks ago and the dad is super cool and chill. They live on a dirt road in the country and have cars and stuff everywhere. It's crazy and would be super fun to live up there! He wants to talk to his pastor first so hopefully we can go see them on Thursday.

I think that's about it for my week...I have a HUGE headache now because at the library, they are having some Hawaiian thing here for Summer and they have been smacking these HUGE drums the whole time I've been here. Hopefully it didn't mess up my letter much. 

Have a great week everyone!! Glad to see that everyone survived the last week of school and that Travis actually graduated!!!! :)

Love, Elder Searle

 Loves the older cars!

 Elder Hansen at the cookout

 Elder Hansen and I playing horseshoes

Transfer Week

What's up family!?

To start out the week, we went to the ribbon cutting at Sis. Hensly's store. It was pretty fun and they had family from Lincoln come down and help out with it. This is the clothing store we modeled for, hopefully it all goes well for her.

Then we helped out another family from the Mahoney Ward that is moving into our area for a bit. This family is moving into a home the girls father used to live in, but he is in jail now, so they will live in his house to watch over it and help out with his plumbing business that he has. We spent one day helping them clean out the place, he has 10 outside cats and 2 inside cats, a dog and he smokes and chews. We didn't know he had white walls until we scrubbed the heck out of it. There is also a very special cat that shoots snot out like a rocket, so that was everywhere. Moving the furniture out was an adventure...we tried not to grab where there was snot. 

So we helped them with that and then they said they had no one to help unload it the next day, so we cancelled what we had and went to help them. Turned out the Mahoney Sisters came to help, good thing the sisters came, they were legit and did a dang good job helping out.

On Friday and Saturday we helped a member move from Bee to Seward. They are members but he hadn't seen them before. They kinda use the wards to help them move and you could tell, they didn't pack anything and didn't seem to care about anything. We packed the trailer as full as we could and then just tried to find a spot in the house that looked good to unload everything. They were on their phones for like 40 min. We weren't very happy because we had to cancel our service at the Foodnet and we did all we could to help them move.  We haven't been able to help them anymore because we've been so busy.

Now for Memorial Day! We just played basketball, then we came back to Seward cause our branch mission leader had people over, so we weren't able to do our meeting and eat with them. So we went to McDonald's because we're broke! Woot!! BUT!! We first went and tried the Hensly's before we ate, they weren't there and we were sad, so we ate at McD's then went back to see if they were home and yep!! They were there!! So we were able to go in and they ordered pizza for us, then we played games. Taylor was at a friends house so it was just the parents and the two kids. My team won Pictionary! It was me, the dad and Tyler vs. Elder Hansen the mom and Kole. Then Taylor came home right before we started reading a chapter from the Book of Mormon! It was great!! We were able to have the whole family there and read it! It was great to be able to do a Family Home Evening with them. We are going back over there on Wednesday.

Transfers are this week but I'm pretty sure I'm staying, I think Elder Hansen will be staying with me as well...it will be his last transfer. We will find out on Thursday! 

Love you all!! I typed this email really quick so hopefully it makes sense! :D

Love, Elder Searle